The premier set out the goals at a na­tional tele­con­fer­ence at the State Coun­cil in Beijing. “Ba­si­cally, our eco­nomic struc­tural re­form is to es­tab­lish a proper re­la­tion­ship be­tween the gov­ern­ment and the mar­ket, al­low­ing the mar­ket to play an es­sen­tial role in al­lo­cat­ing re­sources,” said Li, adding that the key of such a re­form is to trans­form gov­ern­ment func­tions. One of the gov­ern­ment’s key ob­jec­tives through such ef­forts is to re­al­ize mar­ket po­ten­tial and en­sure sus­tain­able eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment.

Since 2013, 618 items of State Coun­cil agen­cies have been can­celed, or del­e­gated to lower ap­proval lev­els, eas­ily meet­ing, by more than a third, the tar­get for cut­ting the num­ber of items re­quir­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive ap­proval.

Yet Li noted that work re­mains to be done. “The gov­ern­ment is still in­volved in ar­eas that it should not be re­spon­si­ble for,” he said. Li stressed that the ef­forts to stream­line ad­min­is­tra­tion and scale back gov­ern­ment con­trol are be­ing made to meet the re­quire­ments for an­other round of open­ing up and im­prove China’s global com­pet­i­tive­ness.

“We used to rely on our de­mo­graphic div­i­dend, yet to­day, in or­der to boost in­vest­ment, we need to rely more on hu­man re­sources and in­no­va­tion,” he said. Sev­eral of­fi­cials from both the cen­tral and lo­cal gov­ern­ments have also in­tro­duced their achieve­ments in stream­lin­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion in the past three years dur­ing Mon­day’s meet­ing.

The city of Shang­hai has ap­plied for its Free Trade Zone, a much re­duced neg­a­tive list for for­eign in­vest­ment which has cut special ad­min­is­tra­tive mea­sures by more than one third.

Con­se­quently, for­eign in­vest­ment pro­grams that are not on the neg­a­tive list can be filed im­me­di­ately.

The Shang­hai gov­ern­ment has also ex­plored new busi­ness reg­is­tra­tion poli­cies, which has slashed com­pany reg­is­tra­tion time from 29 days to less than four. It has also made great strides in sys­tem­atic in­no­va­tion, in terms of trade su­per­vi­sion.

In the city’s free trade zone, more than 100 new mea­sures were im­ple­mented and in­ter­na­tional trade was given its own ex­clu­sive channel. The time taken for cus­toms clear­ance pro­ce­dures was cut by 40 per­cent. Also in re­cent years, the State Ad­min­is­tra­tion for In­dus­try and Com­merce uni­fied three types of busi­ness li­censes, short­en­ing the reg­is­tra­tion process for en­ter­prises by two to three days, which has re­sulted in greater con­ve­nience for en­ter­prises.

The Na­tional De­vel­op­ment and Re­form Com­mis­sion car­ried out its ef­forts in stream­lin­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion through two lists, four plat­forms as well as fur­ther del­e­ga­tion of power to lower lev­els.

The State Com­mis­sion Of­fice for Pub­lic Sec­tor Re­form will re-ex­am­ine pre­vi­ous re­forms and tackle any im­proper del­e­ga­tion of power. Its work will also im­prove once it comes un­der a more uni­fied stan­dard as will on­line ad­min­is­tra­tion and con­sul­ta­tion. Mak­ing in­for­ma­tion avail­able on items con­cern­ing ap­proval, spec­i­fy­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, and deep­en­ing re­forms will also be en­hanced.

En­ter­prises have al­ready ben­e­fited from im­ple­mented mea­sures and mar­ket vi­tal­ity has in­creased. The mea­sures un­der­taken are al­ready